It is known to provide an image sensor or camera assembly having a solid state single chip image sensor held in a lens mount, a first group of lenses held in a lens barrel that is threaded into the lens mount, and an auto focus head which can be used during operation of the camera to adjust the focus on the surface of the image sensor.
In order to obtain satisfactory optical results from such assembled camera lenses, the total degree of optical misalignment/tilt in the assembled camera lens must be within very narrow limits (subsequently referred to as the “tolerance budget”). In particular, the increase in complexity and part count of the lenses used in auto-focus cameras in recent years has made it particularly difficult to keep these cameras within the tolerance budget for a given assembled camera lens. This is because each additional component introduces an additional risk of misalignment/tilt in the assembled lens. For example, in many lenses a first degree of misalignment and tilt is introduced by the coupling between the first group of lenses and the lens barrel, a second by the coupling between the threaded lens barrel and the lens mount, and a third by the coupling between the lens mount and the auto focus stage.
There is a need in the art to address these problems.